Eighteen Plus Three
by File 13
Summary: Before the Shikon no Tama. Before Naraku. Before the bloodshed, and the heartache, and the wonder, and the suffering, and the joy. Before Kagome… And before Kagome came back to him, before he was complete, before his happy ending, there were eighteen and three years. This is his story. "Shinjitsu no Uta"
1. Dead and Alive

**...**

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" **Dead and Alive"**

 _Eighteenth Spring_

 _Before He Met Her_

 _ **...**_

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The smell of burning filled his nose, acrid and black. Men, women and children were screaming bloody murder as the buildings around them were eaten up by eager tongues of orange flame, their shrill cries ringing in his ears. People were undoubtedly dying, their worldly possessions destroyed, but he didn't care. He'd caused it after all. Let them suffer, like he had, let them know the heartache he was feeling with their own.

An arrow whistled past him, followed quickly by an explosion from below as the temple's own fires were fed with oxygen. The blast sent him further up than he had expected on a burst of blistering wind that burned his bare feet, but was already beginning to cool.

He grinned, twisting in the weightlessness he was suspended in to watch the building collapse entirely, spitting smoking and fiery wooden shrapnel even fifty feet in the air, above him. He twisted again, dodging the ballistic hazards as they came near, none of them touching him and his savage euphoria.

He didn't usually take such pleasure in destruction and death. And yet, he did now, because through the macabre, through the gruesome, because of the pain, in his hands now was his salvation: a tiny rose colored jewel, perfectly round and no bigger than his eye, hanging from some sort of decorative chain tangled between his claws.

This was the Shikon no Tama.

This was how he would become finally free. Free from this cursed half life he'd lived for eighteen years, free from his birthright of being nothing, free to be his own man, free to have power, to take what he needed. He'd never have to suffer being so powerless again, never again forced to live with his human heart and his demon blood struggling against themselves for dominance. He'd be free from the damned human condition where he could love.

With the Shikon no Tama, he could at last become a youkai.

Below him and just ahead was the forest. That was his last escape, his haven. With savage triumph, he began to fall back to the earth. He was _so_ _close_ now. He could taste it on his tongue as he landed light as a feather on the stony wall of the shrine, vaulting over the railing and leaping forward. All the time, his blood pounded in his ears, his heartbeat a requiem thundering _freedom. Freedom. Freedom._

" _INUYASHA_!"

The arrow came without warning, a silvery streak that was his ending. He could feel as its razor tip pierced his skin, his flesh, his bone, before passing clear through his chest and burying itself into the tree behind him. The Goshinboku, he knew. He cried out in the pain, the sound leaving his lips on a rush of air that left his lungs without his permission, his entire body jerking away from his destination, away from his salvation. His arm swung up with the force of the sudden stop, his fingers unfeeling, and before he knew it, the Shikon no Tama, his one means of deliverance from the life he lived, was slipping through his fingertips. His heart skipped a beat, and he reached out of it, but too late, it was out of his reach, thudding softly against the mossy forest floor, and he was left reaching, his arm outstretched towards a woman of breathtaking beauty, a woman with her bow still raised, a woman whose eyes glowed with a burning hatred as the breeze blew past them.

"Kikyo…" A flare of hatred of his own, but that curl of flame was drowned out in cold despair. Betrayal. Woe. He reached further forward, as if he could touch her even as his vision was dimming. He was dying, and yet… "How could you…"

The beautiful woman had staggered down the temple steps and knelt to pick up the Shikon no Tama. People were surrounding her as she held it close to her chest, their voices a muddy drone that was only growing quieter in his head as the grey world began to darken. Everyone was there, and here he was, dying and alone. Such was his fate, he knew.

His hand fell limply to his side, and his grey world went black.

It was an infinite blackness.

There was nothing.

Not a soul.

Not a light.

Not a sound.

Not a heartbeat.

No peace, no flame, no suffering or desire.

Simply an eternity of blackness, of nothingness. Endless hours. Countless days. A breath of time, a heartbeat.

And then there suddenly _was_ something: a scent. It was all over him, settled in his clothes, in his hair, on his skin. It was the wonderful, terrible scent of the woman who had killed him… And it was coming closer.

He opened his eyes. Sound, sight, feeling flooded his senses, almost overpowering him with the deafening silence of the night time forest around him, crickets chirping softly and frogs croaking nearby, the starlit darkness a sunlight to his gaze after so, so long in that infinite evanescence.

Had… It all been a dream?

No… No, he had died. But he _wasn't_ dead. He was alive. He was alive and with an arrow in his chest; _her_ arrow. He reached to touch it, to pull it from his heart, but with a wince of pain he realized it was _her_ arrow for a reason. He could not touch it.

A piercing scream pierced the tranquility, shrill words he could not make out making his ears twitch. Suddenly, something collided with the ground twenty feet away, and something green and white flew shrieking through the air, sliding the last few meters to come to a stop just in front of him.

His nose did not lie. This was her. And when she looked up, he recognized her. Shiny midnight hair that cascaded down her shoulders, eyes like freshly tilled earth after the rains that shone with the starlight, a young, pretty face with pale skin and cheeks flushed with exertion. There were twigs in her hair, and dirt on her face, she was sprawled out in the most ungraceful and unflattering fashion and breathing hard, and she was wearing the strangest forest green and white yukata and wrap he had ever seen, but there was no denying that this was the woman who had killed him. The woman who had betrayed him. The woman he had loved. The woman whose face had haunted his dreams since he was a child.

"Oi, Kikyo!"

She looked up, dark eyes wide.

And that was the beginning of it all.

...

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 _Glossary:_

Shikon no Tama - the sacred jewel; the jewel of four souls

Youkai - a demon/spirit

Goshinboku - the sacred tree; the god tree

Yukata - a type of Japanese 'shirt'

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A/N Yep, here's another series of one-shots. I just never see enough stories that follow Inuyasha and his early life or during the three year separation, so here's a bunch of them. None of them will be chronological, some will be pretty dang violent, a few will be multi-chapter, and hopefully it'll tear your heart out, make you sad, and entertain ya'll. For once, if you've got an idea about something that could have happened to him, leave a little comment 'cause I wanna hear it!

Also, leave a comment anyway XD They give me life. Comments, drawing, and D&D keeps me alive, guys, lolz

Have fun, don't die, love yourselves, and I hope you'll enjoy, huehuehuehue~~

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 _Currently listening to:_ _You Give Love A Bad Name - Bon Jovi (lol see what I did there?)_


	2. Shinjitsu no Uta

**...**

* * *

" **Shinjitsu no Uta"**

 _Nineteenth Summer_

 _After She Left Him_

 _ **...**_

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Inuyasha could only remember a couple times when he thought he'd die because he was drowning. The first time was by far the more frightening of the two experiences.

He remembered it like it was yesterday, how the water filtered through his nose into his throat, the way his head fell suddenly heavy and the water's weight pressed against his eardrums. The frantic beating of his tiny heart in his chest - he'd only been a child that time - and the way his frantically clawing arms had slowed along with it. He'd been attacked that time, thrown against the ground by a giant river serpent before he'd even known what had hit him, then dragged into the water even while he struggled against the bonds of its massive tail. It had been smiling at him with that terrible serpentine grin, its cold black eyes fixed on his tiny writhing form, two long fangs curling hungrily over his body.

That time he might have been a tiny brat, only just beginning to understand what a terrible world he lived in. That time he'd been young and full of defiant life, and he refused to die even through he had never been so submerged in water. This time, though… This time he didn't have that defiance. This time it'd been his own ineptitude that had landed him in this position, staring into the flaming orange light of the sunset as it shattered against the rippled water above him, bubbles rising to meet it, tickling his fingers and feet as they passed.

There'd been a fight. An oni had attacked them suddenly, unexpectedly, totally out of the blue, taking them all off guard as it threw out its arm, catching Inuyasha in the chest and sending him careening off the side of the cliff they'd been traveling along into the lake below at speeds that would have broken every bone in a normal person's body. Fortunately it hadn't broken every bone in his body, it had just shattered his elbow and left his left leg snapped cleanly in half.

 _Lucky me,_ he thought dazedly, watching as another silvery, writhing pocket of air escaped his open lips and billowed up to the sunset surface. Of course, he could have swam back up to the surface if he really wanted to. He could have broken that thin line between the glorious cold air his lungs burned to breathe and the watery warm depths his body had decided to settled comfortably against if he'd really wanted to. But even as he watched a tiny curl of red blood stream from the cut on his lip, as it swirled in the wake of his sinking body and dissolved into the clear darkness, he really couldn't find it in himself to care.

It'd been five moon cycles, eight days, and seven nights since she'd left him and he'd lost half of who he was. He didn't know that he'd lost half of his soul - his hanyou soul, not his human heart or his demon blood - until very recently, but it'd been eating away at him ever since. He hadn't been fighting at full strength. He hadn't been breathing as deeply as he used to. He hadn't seen as far as he used to, he couldn't smell the clear forest like he used to, he hadn't slept as soundly as before, he couldn't hear the sounds of silence. There had been nothing that really made him want to do anything. He didn't want to eat, he didn't want to sleep, he didn't want to stay awake. The fact that Sango and Miroku had gotten him to stop wandering around the Well like a zombie was a miracle in the first place, and now here he was. Sinking into the comfortable warmth of some lake in the middle of nowhere and on the cusp of reality.

This is where the memories came. This is where they took over. This was where visions of his mother flashed before his eyes; she hadn't taught him how to swim. She'd died before she could. The thought probably hadn't even crossed his mind. He was vaguely glad that she had died while he was so young. He hadn't understood death at that age. He'd missed her, but he hadn't felt the ripping, tearing anguish of losing her like he would have now.

Another mass of rippling silver bubbles rose from his mouth.

Kikyo's death was painful. He could still remember the sensation of her crumbling to dust in his arms, the warmth of her rescued soul as it passed through him like a balm. But she was free. She had reached Nirvana, her salvation had come at last, and she'd left him. He'd come for her, and she had said that had been enough. But was it enough? He still wondered sometimes, before the absolute peace, the gentle warmth of her soul settled over him. It was enough. That was good.

A third breath left him, this one considerably smaller than the others, and trailing with a hundred smaller bubbles that flew to the surface of the lake. The light that was fractured across the thin window to reality flashed and twinkled like a thousand tiny gems, though darker than they had been before, like the little lights that had danced in _her_ eyes. Before he could stop his darkened mind, he could see her, with her hair like midnight and her kind hands that could both comfort and kill, her soft eyes that glittered when she looked upon him.

Gods, how he missed her. His strength left him, along with his last dwindling breath. There had been two times he had been drowning. The first had been infinitely more terrifying than the last. Mostly because he'd had life yet to live then. He didn't want to give that up. But now, without her…

Why should he?

He closed his eyes. Let the comforting companionship of death and numbness wrap around him like a blanket. He'd see her again, in the afterlife that he'd never hoped to meet before. He wasn't afraid. He didn't care to live this half life he'd have without her.

He sank into the darkness and let the darkness take him. He let her hands touch his face, the memory of her voice wash over him and fill his empty lungs.

Then it wasn't her hands that were ghosting over his cheeks, but two pairs of strong, callused fingers and palms that grasped for his arms, his clothes, reaching, pulling, yanking him up into fiery eventide and dragging him onto the grassy bank. He coughed, water spilling from his lungs, past his lips, heaving and gagging at the unnatural taste as his head cleared.

"Inuyasha! Inuyasha are you okay!" Sango was crying. Inuyasha looked up at her out of bleary eyes. There was a splatter of blood across her cheek, and the Hiraikotsu slung across her back was stained red. Miroku's face appeared beside hers. There was something nasty across his face that Inuyasha didn't want to place.

"Inuyasha?" he asked. Inuyasha hacked again, his lungs burning with cold air. So, so cold, after the warmth of his watery grave. "Stay with us, Inuyasha.

"Stay with us."

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 _Glossary:_

Hiraikotsu - Sango's bone boomerang weapon; "flight bone"

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A/N So where the fetch does "Shinjitsu no Uta" - which means "Song of Truth" come into play with all this, you might be wondering?

The fifth Inuyasha credits song is "Shinjitsu no Uta". The fifth Inuyasha credits video shows Inuyasha drowning. I do suggest you go listen to it and watch it, you'll see what I mean.

And really, he sort of did learn the truth in this made up circumstance. He really didn't care anymore, as sad as it was.

hHHHNNNNNGGGG suffer.

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 _Currently listening to:_ _Shinjitsu no Uta - Do As Infinity (I love them, holy crap)  
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